That's right, we have another sn0w on our hands! geohot has released his answer to the dev team's ultrasn0w. purplesn0w is a new soft unlock that is available via Cydia at apt.geohot.com. geohot claims that this is a much cleaner and better alternative to ultrasn0w. So if any of you all are having problems with ultrasn0w this might be worth trying.

via geohot's blog:

Wifi fails? Battery fails? Unlock fails? You need purplesn0w, the geohot 3GS unlock solution. Now I know you here a lot about different colors of sn0w, but I’m here to tell you why purplesn0w is the best. First off, what is purplesn0w? It’s a soft unlock for your 3GS that I’d actually use day to day. It’s not a daemon that takes any resources, and it doesn’t add a task to your baseband. It’s very close to a true unlock. All it does is patch three files, CommCenter, lockdownd, and your wildcard activation plist(which you need, activate w at&t sim first, no hacktivation support yet). That’s it, no other files are installed. Props to Oranav for the at+xlog exploit!
A full explanation is coming soon, but I think you clever reversers out there will see what it does, and see why it’s so pristine :-) The payload is radically different from other varieties of sn0w. beta as usual, back up first.

Be sure to have legit activated 3GS
Disable 3G if you don’t have it(like T-Mobile).
Add apt.geohot.com to Cydia
Install com.geohot.purplesn0w
Watch for success output in Cydia
Reboot, and enjoy your unlocked iPhone

UPDATE:

About a year ago today, I found the at+stkprof exploit. Back then, I struggled for 3 days to write a payload. No luck, I just wasn't a good enough reverser. So I stashed the exploit away until December, when I gave it to dev for use in yellowsn0w.
Now a year later, I wrote a payload and delivery system in a day. And it's an awesome payload. Ideally we'd like to patch the lock out of flash, but with the apparently proper sig checks, that isn't going to happen. So purplesn0w is the next best thing. I copy the page I want to patch to an unused region of memory. In memory I patch it. Then, using the MMU, I map the flash page out and remap the patched memory page in it's place.
No new iPhones are really unlocked, activation creates a ticket allowing the baseband to be used with that sim. The lockstate of the phone really lies on apples servers. Unlocked is auth all sims. Locked is auth AT&T sims only. Fortunately this ticket system provides an easy way to deliver the payload and reexecute the patched code all in one. And since the ticket is already delivered on baseband resets, theres no need to write another daemon to hog battery. I use the daemon already designed for this, lockdownd. A patch to commcenter gets it to run the payload on ticket delivery. And a patch to your activation record contains the payload. So using existing apple machinery, I unlock when needed.
In retrospect, I should've just patched commcenter to send the payload. Then hacktivation would work no problem. Oh well, tomorrow is another day. I'll add hacktivation support then.

Im sorry, but Geohot is so annoying.... the dev team is superior, they actually test and worry about everyone in their releases and wont just throw code out there to the public without any thought to it. Screw geohot, devteam is better. The not accepting donations thing is the prime example too!

Im sorry, but Geohot is so annoying.... the dev team is superior, they actually test and worry about everyone in their releases and wont just throw code out there to the public without any thought to it. Screw geohot, devteam is better. The not accepting donations thing is the prime example too!

You actually should be sorry. If it wasnt for Geohot, you would never have been able to unlock or jailbreak your phone today! It was Geo who found the exploits, it was geo who handed his finds over to the dev team. If you lack the knowledge on the subject then it is best to keep your mouth shut about it.

You actually should be sorry. If it wasnt for Geohot, you would never have been able to unlock or jailbreak your phone today! It was Geo who found the exploits, it was geo who handed his finds over to the dev team. If you lack the knowledge on the subject then it is best to keep your mouth shut about it.

AMEN!!!! AMEN!!!!!

Well said brother. Without Geohot none of us would have any of this sh@t. You should be thanking him for giving you and alternative solution.

Man i swear. People on this site just love bashing and will take any chance they get to do so.

As far as the unlocking software goes thank you Geohot!!! I was having problems with ultrasn0w when swapping out to my T-Mobile Sim card. Purplesn0w has been working great so far I've swapped back and forth from AT&T to T-Mobile a half dozen times already just to test and everything is still great! Wifi holding strong also. Many thanks!!

geohot rules and acctully beat the dev team to it good work and keep up the good work

but why do we got to maney unlocks now and not for 2.2.1 LOL

If you want 2.2.1 unlock then upgrate to 3.0 so you can update the baseband to 4.26.08, and then downgrade back to 2.2.1. You will then be able to use ultrasn0w on 2.2.1 as long as your baseband is at 4.26.08

Originally Posted by A_DuB187

As far as the unlocking software goes thank you Geohot!!! I was having problems with ultrasn0w when swapping out to my T-Mobile Sim card. Purplesn0w has been working great so far I've swapped back and forth from AT&T to T-Mobile a half dozen times already just to test and everything is still great! Wifi holding strong also. Many thanks!!

stop comparing devteam and geohot would ya? they're both great! geohot found the exploit and handed over to devteam yes but what made some of you so sure the devteam wouldn't have found it before today anyway? devteam delays the unlock because of safety and compliance but do you think geohot would just throw any code out without thinking twice? he was also the person who unlocked the 1st iphone in the world. Both of them have good qualities why don't you guys just support both instead of who's better? do the comparing outside the forums i suggest do not influence newbies' perception! thanks..

The Following User Says Thank You to squaresoft For This Useful Post:

purplesn0w does not work if you used redsn0w it seems. or at least it won't work if you had ultrasn0w installed. best if you do a fresh from restore.

Originally Posted by squaresoft

stop comparing devteam and geohot would ya? they're both great! geohot found the exploit and handed over to devteam yes but what made some of you so sure the devteam wouldn't have found it before today anyway? devteam delays the unlock because of safety and compliance but do you think geohot would just throw any code out without thinking twice? he was also the person who unlocked the 1st iphone in the world. Both of them have good qualities why don't you guys just support both instead of who's better? do the comparing outside the forums i suggest do not influence newbies' perception! thanks..

competition is good for everyone. people should stop complaining and just pick one and use it... they both work. and geohot was the one that released the unlocker causing dev to do the same. if it weren't for him then we would still have to wait for 3.1. really stop crying.